


Tributary

by Heather C (riteinthefeels)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Grieving, Post-TDW, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-01 22:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1049549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riteinthefeels/pseuds/Heather%20C
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after Thor: The Dark World, Thor finally takes time to grieve. Major spoilers for the movie! Inspired by <a href="http://triangularlogic.tumblr.com/post/67315792462/just-imagine-in-the-days-following-thors-return">this.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Tributary

Sleep had fallen over the palace. Too many beds lay empty in the wake of the Svartalf attack, among those the beds of his mother and of the man he called brother for a millennium. It still choked him up to think of all he wished he had said to Frigga, but the things he had not done for Loki brought him to his knees against the cold stone of the deserted corridor.

Thor gasped, pain tearing through his chest as if the memory alone could rip open his heart. For the first time since the elves attacked, he could allow himself to mourn, but he wouldn’t bereave the woman who raised him tonight. He shoved to his feet, a hand on the wall steadying his great bulk as he adjusted the sack over his shoulder. Daggers clinked together inside, and he glanced through the shadows to make sure no one had seen him.

He slipped through the scullery door where tomorrow’s feast lay already prepared along the counters. He picked both legs from the pheasant, an assortment of aromatic roasted vegetables, and a whole pot of honey, wrapping them in a second sack and hefting it gently across his back. The door to the courtyard creaked on its hinges as he stole out, but he was across the garden and under cover of Idunn’s great orchard before anyone could come to investigate.

Free hand trailing along the gnarled branches as he passed, his sight blurred and moonlight reflected from his wet cheeks. Grass rustled softly under padded feet, each careful step measured and found wanting without the steps of the other who had always accompanied him. As boys, Odin’s sons had come to the orchard often to hide and find each other, and Loki took care to step exactly where Thor had, to the great amusement of them both. When Loki learned how to make himself invisible, it simply made the game that much more exciting.

“Show yourself,” Thor whispered to the wind, his usual response when his brother remained unseen for too long and Thor worried of his parents’ disappointment were he to come home alone, but this time no stealthy imp appeared from behind a tree, giggling through a lopsided grin and sparkling eyes. This time Thor stood alone, spectral shadows of swaying branches seeming to reach right through and hollow out his body, pushing aside the warmth that sustained him and filling him instead with a suffocating chill.

He collapsed against a knotted trunk, unfeeling of the bumps digging into his spine. The sacks clattered to the ground. He clutched at his chest and curled in upon himself, as if by making himself as small as possible the chill would pass him by. His body shook, soundless sobs pouring from the tautness of each bunched muscle. He suddenly wished he had brought Mjolnir and called her to his hand, swinging his arm even before she reached him so that she crashed through a branch as thick as his thigh, and though this released the physical tension from his body, he realized the chill was not an enemy he could simply break in two and move past.

Scrambling in the low moonlight, Thor collected the memorabilia back into the sacks, thankful that the honey hadn’t spilt. He pushed against the crushing weight on his shoulders to continue. No one at the palace would understand why he grieved so deeply for a man who had rejected his love at every turn, and he had to finish this before dawn’s pale gradient filtered through the eastern sky.

The broad main street of Asgard’s urban sprawl led directly from the palace to the waterfront where every able citizen had gathered to pay homage to the beloved queen. Though Thor preferred the direct route in most things, Loki had impressed upon him the occasional need for subversion, so Thor skirted the city on footpaths. Dusty ruts crisscrossed the ground from frequent daytime travel of hunters returning from kills and shepherds guiding their flocks out to graze.

He stooped every so often to gather plants he had seen around Loki’s quarters before he fell: things used for spells, things that affected mood, or occasionally, things that simply beautified the room or smelled pleasant. Blonde wisps escaped from his braids and the wind blew them back into his eyes as he bent. At last, the trickling eddies of a small tributary reached his ears and his steps quickened, anxious as he was to start the ritual before he lost heart.

Setting the sacks down on the sandy shore, he waded among the cattails until he found the intricate funerary barge hidden earlier by a guard who required a particularly hefty bribe to keep quiet. A great serpent adorned the bow, knotting and looping back upon itself as it rose in relief from darkly stained wood.

The little boat held no other trappings, and Thor carefully removed each item from the larger sack, crowding them on the deck of the bow. The sack itself he laid out in the middle of the barge, one of Loki’s jade green cloaks blanketing wooden planks as they had often blanketed the forest floor when he and Thor snuck out of the palace to eat lunch in the solidarity of each others’ company as young men. Light from the moon struggled to paint everything in shades of gray, but the color, ingrained in Thor’s mind as it was, showed bright as if in full sun.

He carried the smaller sack to the barge and arranged the foods along the perimeter, intermingling the wild plants picked from the forest path. From their temporary place at the bow, he took both daggers and laid them, hilt-side forward, side by side on the faded cape. Finally, he picked up the helmet with the tips of his fingers, afraid to smudge the polished gold. He had raided his brother’s abandoned bedchamber for Loki’s first helmet; it weighed much less than the more elaborate ones he had worn for the last few centuries. Small horns curved slightly across the skull like the antlers of a yearling buck.

His hands trembled as he placed the helmet bow-side on the cape. Tears flowed freely from glassy eyes, and he unhitched the boat by touch, slogging beside it through the shallows. All of Asgard slept, and his unimpeded march led him onto the embankment and finally down to the harbor. He hummed softly—a strange, minor key melody Frigga had put them to bed with for years until Thor informed her, as future kings of the nine realms, they were much too old to be sung to sleep by their mother.

Thor raised a hand listlessly, calling Mjolnir from the apple tree trunk where she lay embedded. Loki had ever been the one to excel in ranged combat, and Thor found his fingers, so dexterous and deadly when fighting in close quarters, to be utterly useless for stringing a bow. The hammer reached him as the barge spilled into the harbor, strong currents pulling it along faster.

Hand heavy with the weight of a hammer he no longer felt worthy to wield, Thor’s eyes closed and he breathed out a shuddering sigh before lifting Mjolnir towards the raft. A single spark streaked across the soundless sky like a comet in miniature, igniting the craft on impact. He stood sentry and watched as orange from the flames blurred in swirls with the pinpoints of white stars, the flickering rainbow of the Bifrost, and the blackness of space swallowing it all through his tears.

Mist engulfed the blazing tribute as it upended over the waterfall just under the observatory. Doubt flooded through the unshakable warrior, as if by this act he had finally given his brother up for good, turned his back on him, and forgone any notion of reconciliation. He gulped down the dread that threatened to devour him whole, closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind as Loki had taught him back when Thor went through an envious phase. Loki could do something better than he, and it did not matter that it was a thing the whole of Asgard rejected.

His hands cupped and rose to his head, and though he felt the burning of magic on his fingertips, when his eyes opened, not even a faint glow lit his face. Hands dropping to his sides, he paced upon the dock for a turn, and then repeated the motions. This time, a shaky, glimmering orb met his sight, but it disintegrated as he tried to push it to the sky.

Fists clenched, he closed his eyes a third time. He drew breath deeply, each exhale pulling at something lodged deep within his soul until, with a disconcerting rattle, it finally flowed out from his eyes. Clouds gathered above the harbor, shedding the heavy drops of spring rain and cleansing foul remorse, at least temporarily, from Thor’s consciousness.

This time, he didn’t even close his eyes. A bolt of lightning snaked down to his outstretched hand, balling and sparking in upon itself as he watched. He held it a moment, heat and pain searing into his skin as a future reminder of the brother he could not save. When he finally released the sphere, it swirled upward and exploded into a thousand blinking embers that streaked back into the harbor.

Thor sat on the dock, pulled off his dripping moccasins, and dipped his feet into the tepid water, relishing the feel of wetness lapping up his ankles. He watched as the last ember drowned in the harbor and slouched over his knees, trying to remember the last time his brother had sat beside him out here. Hours passed; the rain lessened and the clouds infused with the blush of dawn.

On Odin’s private balcony, Loki’s lips twitched up but his eyes shone cold and melancholy.


End file.
